Robinhood and TradePMR are going live with a pilot for an advisor referral program, Robinhood Advisor Network, that the firms have teased at for more than a year.

Robinhood entered the wealth management space at the end of 2024, with its acquisition of TradePMR, the Florida-based technology and custodial services provider for registered investment advisors. At that time, the two companies promised to create a referral program, giving TradePMR’s RIA clients access to Robinhood customers through a joint tech platform that connects eligible clients with RIAs within the Robinhood app. 

The referral program will only be available to RIA firms with at least $500 million in assets and a relationship with TradePMR. The pilot program will connect RIAs with Robinhood employees with at least $250,000 in investible assets. In the second quarter, when the program is expected to go live, this will be expanded to Robinhood customers with at least $250,000.  Robb Baldwin, vice president and general manager of TradePMR at Robinhood Markets, declined to say how many Robinhood clients meet the eligibility requirements.

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Under the program, customers will fill out a short questionnaire within the Robinhood app, which will provide a list of at least three vetted independent advisors. Customers will then be able to schedule an introductory call with an advisor.

The service is free for Robinhood clients, though they will pay the advisor’s fees as agreed. RIA firms will pay 25% of the gross revenue derived from those referrals to Robinhood Asset Management, which operates the program, according to a regulatory filing. For an RIA that ends participation in the program, they will also pay a one-time fee of four times the revenue received from those referrals for the preceding 12 months.

“The pilot is intentionally limited and will be used to validate experience quality, advisor integration and customer demand,” Robinhood said in a statement. “As the program evolves, advisor-managed portfolios are expected to appear directly within the Robinhood app as part of a more integrated experience.”

Baldwin said he expects the program to be fully scaled up by the end of the year, based on supply and demand. 

When the companies first announced the referral program, Baldwin said it would be different from those already in place at the big custodians. For one, they would build a referral program that’s more innovative than competitors’ and digitally focused, as the next-gen investor operates digitally.

“As those clients inherit wealth, they’re going to need advice, and it was going to be a real challenge to try to reach that generation with today’s technology, the way it resides at current brokerage firms,” Baldwin said. “This allows us to build that bridge and to create that technology in a way that Gen Z and millennials are used to utilizing technology to make decisions, and create that first at-base platform that is a totally different step compared to what the competitors have done over the years. It’s usually a human hand-off from a branch officer, and somebody’s in the middle trying to retain that customer with the branch office. Today, the next generation of millennials and Gen Zs, I believe, want technology to make decisions.”

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Robinhood, which went public five years ago, has more than 27 million funded customer accounts, the majority of which are millennials and Gen Z investors, with about $324 billion in assets in custody. Robinhood believes some of its clients will seek more sophisticated financial advice as they age.

Other firms have entered the client custodial referral market recently, a space previously dominated by Charles Schwab and Fidelity Investments. BNY Pershing recently announced plans to launch a program later this year under the name the BNY Advisor Match Service. The program will provide “one or two” advisor referrals to clients upon request, based on criteria set by the custodian, according to the filing. 

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Goldman Sachs Ayco, which specializes in financial and retirement planning for C-suite executives and employees at Fortune 500 companies, has already started a referral program with Creative Planning, Mercer Advisors and Wealth Enhancement, according to the RIAs, which are among the largest in the United States.

Betterment and Altruist are also working on referral programs.